Idea Energy Power

 

Dorothy Sayers was known for her crime novels, she was also a mystical theologian in the Anglican tradition of the Western Church, think, perhaps, Charles Williams. Here she is on Idea, Energy and Power:

WHEN THE writer’s Idea is revealed or incarnate by his Energy, then, and only then, can his Power work on the world.  More briefly and obviously, a book has no influence till somebody can read it. 

Before the Energy was revealed or incarnate it was, as we have seen, already present in Power within the creator’s mind, but now that Power is released for communication to other men, and returns from their minds to his with a new response.  It dwells in them and works upon them with creative energy, producing in them fresh manifestations of Power. 

This is the Power of the Word, and it is dangerous.  Every word—even every idle word—will be accounted for at the day of judgment, because the word itself has power to bring to judgment.  It is of the nature of the word to reveal itself and to incarnate itself—to assume material form.  Its judgment is therefore an intellectual, but also a material judgment.  The habit, very prevalent to-day, of dismissing words as “just words” takes no account of their power.  But once the Idea has entered into other minds, it will tend to reincarnate itself there with ever-increasing Energy and ever-increasing Power.  It may for some time only incarnate itself in more words, more books, more speeches; but the day comes when it incarnates itself in actions, and this is its day of judgment.  

At the time when these words are being written, we are witnessing a fearful judgment of blood, resulting from the incarnation in deeds of an Idea to which, when it was content with a verbal revelation, we paid singularly little heed.  Which Ideas are (morally) Good and which are anti-Good it is not the purpose of this book to discuss; what is now abundantly manifest is the Power.  Any Idea whose Energy manifests itself in a Pentecost of Power is good from its own point of view.  It shows itself to be a true act of creation, although, if it is an evil Idea, it will create to a large extent by active negation—that is to say, by destruction.  The fact, however, that “all activity is of God” means that no creative Idea can be wholly destructive: some creation will be produced together with the destruction; and it is the work of the creative mind to see that the destruction is redeemed by its creative elements. 

 

At the time when these words are being written, we are witnessing a fearful judgment of blood, resulting from the incarnation in deeds of an Idea to which, when it was content with a verbal revelation, we paid singularly little heed.  Which Ideas are (morally) Good and which are anti-Good it is not the purpose of this book to discuss; what is now abundantly manifest is the Power.

Draw the moral as you will and choose wisely, my dear friends.

Your Old Pal,

LSP